One of the challenges of writing
Wild Winter was to find an appropriate text to commemorate the Siege of Lichfield.
When I did not find a contemporary text that was suitably lyrical or dramatic,
I had the idea that it might be interesting to select poems from many different
times and countries.

The poems I eventually chose were
non-specific as to time and place, yet they all shared the powerful emotions
resulting from the inevitable losses and cruelties of any war. I also chose
the poems because of certain words or phrases which I could use to overlap
or link the setting of one poem with another  their merging cries of
protest creating a sonic tapestry of shared experience.

I made English translations of
all these poems (inevitably rather free so the words would be comfortably
singable)  however, to emphasize the universality of human response
to the consequences of war, I would prefer they be sung in their original
languages.

For me, thoughts of this distant
war, the Siege of Lichfield, brings to mind my concern and outrage with the
happenings in the world today, where we are witnessing once again "man's
inhumanity to man."

Texts:

WILD WINTER: Lamentations
for chorus and strings.

The issues over which wars are
fought are various: the cries of protest against the inevitable cruelties
and loss are universal. Thus these texts chosen to commemorate the Siege of
Lichfield are from different times and places, but they surely echo some of
the same emotions.

I have closed my
balcony
for I do not want to hear the weeping,
but behind those dark grey walls
there is nothing left but the sound of weeping.

There are so few angels to sing,
there are so few dogs to bark,
I can hold in the palm of my hand a thousand violins.

But the weeping is a great dog howling,
the weeping is a great angel soaring,
the weeping is a great violin playing,
the flowing tears quieten the wind,
there is nothing left but the sound of weeping.

*Casida del
llanto. García Lorca (1896 -1936)

LAMENT
#2

Do
not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse,
booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

(No se oye otra
cosa que el llanto.
There is nothing left but the sound of weeping.)

Do
not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift
blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

(No se oye otra
cosa que el llanto.
There is nothing left but the sound of weeping.)

Mother whose
heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
War is Kind.
Stephen Crane. (1871-1900)

REPRISE

War
broke, war broke.

War
broke: and now...Winter...
With perishing great darkness closes in...
Now begin famines of thought and feeling.
Wilfred Owen. Op cit.

War, oh war echoing
with the clash of marching men,
resounding with the angry noise of blaring bugles,
Thou drinker of blood, who art savage, withered,
Hideous, thou draggest man into this frenzied orgy,
This raging storm where destiny is distorted, and there is no
God,
where an eerie clarity pervades, darker than the very night,
Gigantic Goddess, with great shafts of lightning thou art
armed,
What purpose dost thou serve, oh Goddess, what purpose?

The women who are
weeping, the youngest children,
they are left defenceless, with tired old men,
who hate themselves and the lie that overwhelms them,
and the monks clad in black, in grey and in white;
all together, in their misery and suffering,
they cry: "Oh Lord our Father, we pray you save us".

Wild organ music
of the winter storm
Is the black fury of man,
The great purple wave of war,
The naked starlight.

Oh Lord, save us...)

With her broken
brow, silvery arms
Night envelopes the dying soldiers.
In the shadow of the autumnal ash tree
Ghosts of the slain cry out.

Oh Lord, save us...)

A thorny wilderness
girdles the city.
From the blood stained threshold
The moon pursues all the terrified women.
Wild wolves broke through the gate.

Im
Osten (In The East). Georg Trakl.(1887-1925)

CODA

....(wild)
winter closes in.
For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild winter, and the need
Of sowings for new spring, and blood for seed.Wilfred
Owen op cit.

END

* Casida = a short
poetic composition of Arabic or Persian origin.

** The Pushkin
poem was written in 1828.

***This version
of the Scots traditional ballad was published in 1803, an earlier version
dates from 1611.